Rob Bishop

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I do just want to add one thing, and I am so appreciative of what the last comment by Mr. Lamborn was, and what you have simply said. We have been talking a great deal in this Congress about jobs. Every one of these programs creates jobs. It creates a work line. It creates the knowledge that we need. Everything Mr. Lamborn was talking about are jobs. These are critical jobs for our country, and we need to do it. I appreciate so much the experts here, the ranking member on the committee, Mr. Franks, who knows so much about it, your input into this thing, because as I said originally, when I was growing up, our defense was duck and cover. I don't want to have to go back to that. And if we are not ready to build this program and to multiply and expand what we are doing, I am back to going under desks. And you can see there are only four desks in this room and there are 435 of us, and I am big. There is not enough room for my cover right here. This is essential and important.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Akin, I appreciate that and I can't claim credit. I stole that line from the commission, who gave their report today. That is what they have said. A deterrent if it's effective is in use every day, and that's still important. I wish I could claim credit for having come up with it, but I stole it. It's still true.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate everything that has been said. And, Mr. Akin, I appreciate your using this time especially with the expertise of those on the subcommittee to try to explain to the House exactly the details of what we are talking about because too often we slosh over this. I know I don't know the details as much as I can. What I do know, of course, is that Russia, even though it may not be our biggest threat, is driving much of our decisions and they're totally revamping their ICBM program: by 2016, 80 percent new missiles. And the key element here by everything is still the concept of the deterrent. There are a lot of people asking why are we investing in this kind of stuff when we might not ever use it. And that's the wrong question. The right question is, When is that deterrent used? And the answer to that is, every day, whether we actually fire anything or not.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, none of us in the delegation had the opportunity of serving with Mr. Orton while he was in Congress. I did, though, have the opportunity to know him, as a result of being majority leader and speaker of the House in the Utah legislature in his first two terms, and as such got to know that Mr. Orton was indeed someone committed to public service. We offer our deep condolences to him and his very young family at this tragic occurrence and remember him with fondness for his commitment to his country and his State.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlelady from Arizona's work on this particular issue. I appreciate Senator McCain's sponsorship of this particular bill. This is indeed a fresh approach that will produce positive benefits for the people in this particular State, and I appreciate it being brought to the floor by the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise to support this bipartisan legislation that was authored by Senator John McCain. This bill would end more than 40 years of Federal restrictions placed upon native people living in the western area of the Navajo Nation. These restrictions have barred area residents from making any improvements and repairs to their homes and property. Once this legislation becomes law, both Navajo and Hopi people will have the opportunity to move forward with critical development projects aimed at providing relief to their region. This means homes without electricity can now be wired, modern plumbing fixtures can be installed and recent health and safety improvements like smoke detectors and water filters can be realized. Mr. Speaker, this legislation is identical to a bill that was introduced in the 110th Congress by Senator McCain. Unfortunately, we delayed consideration of this bill during the presidential election, for whatever reason. Hopefully, we are prepared to move ahead with this good public policy. I am grateful that we are finally able to move forward this legislation that will help both the Navajo and Hopi people. I support the bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the kind words from the gentleman from Indiana. And I understand not only the passion, but the desire to be able to have some kind of strong, stable numbers that you can grasp to try and discuss the debate. No one really knows what it is going to do when you are trying to go into the darkness of a room that doesn't have the lights turned on--maybe because there is too much of an energy tax--but doesn't have the lights turned on to tell us what those numbers actually are. We have heard a great deal about the cap-and-tax proposal. I would like to take the debate maybe one step backwards slightly and just talk about a few basic principles if I could. For we have been engaged in this Congress in something I find very unique, something we haven't had in the last 15 or 16 years in either the Bush or Clinton administrations. We are truly involved in a philosophical, fundamental debate in this Congress. There are those in this Congress and in the administration who truly believe that the best solutions to our problems lie in increasing the role of government. And there are others who truly believe that the best way of finding those solutions are in empowering individuals. And on every issue we have had to date in this Congress, that is truly the crux of the debate. I mean, we may be talking about energy today, or we may be talking about health care tomorrow, or we may be talking about bank bailouts, housing, the budget yesterday. But in each of these issues, that was the same debate; is the better solution empowering individuals or growing the size of government? And in each of those debate areas, in all sincerity, the Democrats basically gave us three options. And it doesn't matter which issue you want to use, you can just put it in there and it is basically the same concept, that in each of these issues they decided, first of all, that it will be the government that will dictate and regulate. In this cap-and-tax or cap-and-trade policy, if it goes through, every person will use the kind of energy and the style of energy as has been dictated by Washington. And in so doing, it would create bigger government, when the EPA will already say without additional legislation they have the power to control the air that we breathe just as they have said they have the power to control the water so they can illustrate or demand that an irrigation ditch be classified as part of the navigable water system of the United States. That is essentially big government. The third element is that it will involve higher taxes. By the President's own budget numbers, this program is identified in his budget as adopting $600-plus billion of new revenue coming from this cap-and-tax. And it is revenue that is not going to the production of alternative energy; it is revenue that would go into the paying for the increase of government that we have done in other bills that we have debated already. And any time that we actually talk about higher taxes, they become winners and losers, as the gentleman from Indiana showed you on his map. If you go to the west coast, the Speaker's district, for example, with a great deal of hydrogen power, there is less of an impact than if you go to the heartland of this country, into the Midwest, where almost all their energy comes from coal-fired sources. There are winners and losers in this type of approach. And even the President's budget director simply said that this program will impose costs on the economy, and we need to know what those costs are in very, very specific numbers. You know, last week we had the TEA tax protests that were going on. And as an old history teacher, I'm sorry, I had to think about this, history does repeat itself. Back in 1773, the British East India Company was in financial trouble, and so the Parliament decided the British East India Company was too big to fail and, therefore, they entered into a bailout agreement. And in this bailout agreement, they imposed a one-size-fits-all mandate on the colonies that the only tea they could drink would be imposed and come from the British East India Company, and the only tax they would pay had to go back to one specific source. It is amazing sometimes that we actually do repeat what has happened in history. Now, I said this is a basic debate and the Democrats have three positions. Well, so do the Republicans, and a vast contrast to them, whatever the issue you want to put in there. But the first one goes back to the idea that the fundamental difference in the solutions that Republicans have proffered--whether they were actually heard on the floor or not, but have proffered--the first one is to go back to the concept that we believe there should be choice and options for Americans. The Founding Fathers in 1773, when they were dumping tea in the harbor, were not just upset about a tax--which, actually, technically, had been lowered--they were upset about the fact that they were eliminated the choice to drink whatever tea they wanted to; that if they wanted to pay for a more expensive Dutch brand, they could not have that option. You know, when I was growing up and I wanted a particular song in the age of plastic records, you had to buy the whole album to get the song. Now, I don't know how iPods work, but my kids tell me that it's cool enough right now that you can actually download the particular song you want. You look around in the world we have today, and everybody, in almost every aspect of their lives, is able to select and make choices and options except when you deal with the Federal Government. And maybe it is time the government needs to realize that, rather than giving a one dictate, one solution and regulate it, you allow people the choice to have options, and in so doing, you empower people with those choices. We have already had different concepts placed on the table that are out there for debate. The No-Cost Stimulus Act is one that I sponsored with Senator Vitter that deals with developing energy sources across the board. The Western Caucus will join with the Republican Study Committee in coming up with an option. There will be more options that will empower Americans to be able to make choices by using all of the above, not taking some energy sources off the table, not trying to use a tax that will pick winners and losers, but simply trying to give those. And those will be alternatives that we will be throwing out. There are some people that say my party is the party of ``no.'' I have to admit, with some of the bills we have had on the floor, it is very easy to vote that way. But if you were to ask me if the bailout bills excessively entangled business and government, I would say yes. If you asked me if the stimulus bill stimulated the growth of government more than jobs, I would say yes. If the GIVE Act actually paid people to volunteer and allowed groups like ACORN to get Federal funding? Yes. If the omnibus land bill made a difference in making it more difficult for the Park Service to fulfill their mission, I would say yes. If the AIG bonus tax was an unconstitutional tax that was a regressive cumulative tax to try and get even with somebody, I would say yes. But if Homeland Security, when they implied that veterans may be part of a right-wing group that needs to be watched carefully, and you asked me if that was outrageous, I would say yes. If you asked if the budget spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much, I would say yes. In all due respect to my colleague from Indiana, I think we are the party of ``yes''; it is just the media is not asking the right questions. And if you were to ask whether empowerment of people and giving them options and choices is the right thing to do, emphatically yes. Because when we try to lower taxes, we take the winners and losers off the table and realize that far too often when we raise taxes, it is people who are on the margins are the ones who are most likely to be harmed. If you were rich, a cap-and-trade policy, or a cap-and-tax policy, will be merely an annoyance, just as the $4-a-gallon gasoline was last fall. It kind of takes you back to the medieval time period where the aristocracy knew that there were sins out there but they could simply go down and buy an indulgence and thereby simply continue on with the same lifestyle without any kind of inhibitions or disruptions whatsoever because they simply bought their way out of it. Poor people could never do that. People on the poverty level today where 50 percent of their income goes to energy, when they hear us talk about energy processes or energy policies, for them that debate is how they heat their homes and how they cook their food and whether they'll be able to afford a luxury like tuna casserole this evening. Affordable, comprehensive, and available energy has been the great equalizer in the history of this country, allowing people to escape poverty and move forward. When we talk about programs that are either going to take money away from those people and then maybe even return it, that is a ridiculous concept. If we talk about programs that are going to increase the prices for those on the margins to survive and to live, that's the same thing as a direct tax on those individuals. For, indeed, if we get to the point in those different parts of this country where you go into a room and you have to flip on the light switch, and if you're rich, it's okay, you can handle it; but if you're poor, you have to determine where flipping on that light switch today makes a difference on whether you can afford Hamburger Helper tonight, we have reached the point where we are no longer taking care of the needs of our people, and we are putting a great slice of the American population at extreme risk. That is a dangerous situation in which to move, and it should be done carefully and it should be done realistically with, as the gentleman from Indiana has said, the numbers and the debate all on the table. That's the future, and that is the fundamental debate that we will be having on this issue and with every other issue, transportation, housing, budget, that we will come up with. That's all there. With that, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. May I simply say in closing on our side that I have to commend the gentleman from California for coming up with this water recycling project that would basically pre-treat the impaired surface of Lake Hodges, California, so that consumer water needs are going to be met. The drought has largely been man-made because of litigation to protect a 3-inch fish, and it will decrease Southern California's water supplies. As a result, there will be water rationing in some areas and water rates will increase for working families and businesses. There will be less imported water to recycle. However, water recycling is still, in the long term, a necessity for California and other arid regions in the West. And all these projects together will help ensure that there will be no such thing as a waste of our water. So I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to the author of this piece of legislation, this bipartisan piece of legislation, as much time as he shall consume, the gentleman from California (Mr. Bilbray).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. During hearings on this bill, the committee heard testimony from historian David Hackett Fischer whose writings on the Revolutionary War pointed out General Washington's support for property rights and the strong actions he took to ensure that his soldiers respected the property of civilians, even when that property belonged to Tory sympathizers. Washington personally gave strict orders to forbid looting, even though plunder was the norm at the time and many of his men were hungry, they were dressed in rags, and they marched barefoot in the snow. It is remarkable in such a desperate situation and in such a noble cause, Washington imposed on the Patriot side such a high standard of conduct. Washington's honorable policy stood in stark contrast to the routine seizures by British and Hessian troops. It is no accident over the course of the early years of the war, in the battleground State of New Jersey, home of the sponsor of this bill, a population that was once evenly divided in its loyalty threw its support to the American cause. There are lessons that we can learn from Washington's example. In earlier battlefield protection efforts--not this one but earlier ones-- the National Park Service misused its eminent domain powers to seize land from unwilling sellers. The justified resentment this caused hurt subsequent efforts. Our enthusiasm for battlefield protection notwithstanding, it is definitely our hope that as we set out to preserve historic sites, we will emulate George Washington and not George III. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I want to be both partisan and very clear on this thing. This is the third time we have actually had this bill before us. I voted for it the first time; I am going to vote for it again; and I will urge my colleagues to support this legislation at the same time. However, in fairness, I guess in fairness to the sponsor, we should do that again since his original bill did pass, and by machinations then over in the Senate, his bill was stripped and sent back to us in his title, with his number and name, but not with his bill. Had the Democratic Party leadership not tried so hard with so many machinations to make sure that Republicans were not allowed to try and make amendments to the omnibus land bill, his bill would have passed the first time, legitimately, and it would be done and passed by now. So let us remember that, unfortunately, the good representative from New Jersey lost out because of games that were played on a bill totally separate to this particular one, and I find those games were unfortunate. This bill, however, I once again want to make very clear that I support this bill, and I will urge my colleagues to support it. We passed another bill dealing with Civil War battlefields with a Republican chief sponsor. It is only fair and appropriate that we now look at Revolutionary War and War of 1812 battlefield sites with the Democratic sponsor. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise to actually speak on this particular bill, H.R. 388, the Crane Conservation Act. Under this legislation, a new international conservation fund is going to be established to assist up to 15 species of cranes that are in Africa, Asia, Australia, North America--I guess everyone except South America. There are currently seven crane species that are protected under our Endangered Species Act. The two most imperiled species reside here in the United States and are covered. The United States already has several laws on the books which can help conserve domestic cranes and their habitats, which includes such things as the Migratory Bird Treaty, the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act, wetlands conservation statutes, and the Endangered Species Act. With the current economic crisis the United States finds itself in-- exacerbated by our spending bills in the stimulus, in the budget, and the omnibus bills which simply spend too much, tax too much, and borrow too much--it is highly questionable whether this is the time to once again create another multinational fund to spend taxpayers' money overseas. Other countries should be required to step up to the plate to save their own wildlife without relying on American funds going there. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I will conclude simply by saying this is a noble concept, but what Dr. Christensen argued is exactly the problem inherent in this noble concept. What we are continuing to do more and more is carve out specific funds for specific animal species that then add up to the total that we are doing rather than realizing our common goals and what we need to deal with. There are seven species that are covered already, two of those in the United States already covered on prior pieces of legislation. This is simply extra funding that is not going to assist necessarily on the American side; it is going to assist overseas in other countries where, quite frankly, in these conditions they should be stepping up to deal with their own wildlife problems, not relying on the United States simply to bail them out once again with another special fund crafted out for American money to go overseas. This is simply another one of several funds that keep growing all the time without any coordinated policy to it. And that is the danger of this bill. It's not the issue at hand. It's not trying to protect these species. It is the haphazard way we go about creating these funds to try to fund specific entities rather than coming up with a comprehensive overall plan and not requiring our friends in other countries to step up to the plate as well.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas, who is an expert not only in cranes and whooping cranes, but on whoopings themselves.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. While this legislation is similar to a bill that was approved by the House last year, and I did, in fact, vote for the bill last year, we have Members who still continue to have concerns with H.R. 411, the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act. During consideration in the Natural Resources Committee during the last Congress, this bill was amended by Congressman Henry Brown to target only 12 imperiled big cats and rare dog species. That was an appropriate amendment especially considering the beginning stages of this particular bill, which had well over 50 different animals listed. However, by the time it went from committee to the floor last year, this bill was expanded, and several other species that are protected under this bill but do not reach the criteria used to create the other five existing wildlife conservation funds under law were added. I am particularly troubled that the inclusion of things like the Iberian lynx, which lives exclusively in Spain and Portugal, is added. These are clearly two countries that are not impoverished European nations. They could easily afford to conserve their own native wildlife. In addition, I note that few of the species singled out for special treatment under this law could be considered ``keystone,'' unlike the African elephant, the tiger, the rhino that are considered keystone criteria. Under H.R. 411, this bill, these 15 cats and dogs will now be competing for limited funds with the other iconic species. More importantly, at a time when America has a national debt in excess of $11 trillion, you still have to question whether this legislation is the proper priority for right now. With Federal spending, bank failures, and home foreclosures reaching historic levels, is it really appropriate to spend our constituents' hard-earned tax money to conserve an African wild dog, an Ethiopian wolf, or a Borneo bay cat in Asia? We still are taxing too much, spending too much, and borrowing too much. And this particular bill once again goes at elements and species that are not considered reaching the criteria of needing this kind of protection. If it were to go back to the original bill that came out last year from the Natural Resources Committee with the Brown amendment intact, then you would have a decent standard bill which I would firmly support. But as long as we are still expanding it to areas that don't meet the criteria that should be used on these types of issues, then I need to urge a ``no'' vote. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, just to clarify on the record, for any kind of species to be included, they have to be included on the endangered species list, the appendix I and appendix II in the red list. Three of these 15 do not meet that criteria. Twelve are legitimate. Three don't meet that criteria. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Just in conclusion, once again, the grants that we have pervaded in the past for things like the African elephant, the rhino, the tigers are on all three lists, not just one of the three lists. Twelve of the fifteen categories included in this are on all three, not one of the three, which is why, if you were to go back to the bill that was actually passed in the Resources Committee, the Brown amendment, and take that standard, that is one that I think is clearly defendable here on the floor. But the fact of the matter is, we have expanded it. And once you expand it, taking not all three criteria, but any of those three criteria, you set the standard for what may or may not happen in the future. And once again, we start moving into the direction of having dedicated reserve funds going to specific areas without having a comprehensive plan of how we want to spend that money overseas. In our situation, in the budget crunch here that we are in, we should be much more systematic in the way we try to deal with these kind of endangered species and at least demand that everything on that list is covered on all three of those categories, not just one or two, but all three of them. Let me just say once again, I did vote for this bill last time. And, once again, I think we could make it better and should be making it better. I do actually want to thank the majority party for putting back an amendment that was inadvertently omitted last time that had been placed in the bill in committee and making sure that that was added in there before this bill came to the floor. That was very kind of them. I appreciate them doing that. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. May I inquire, Doctor, do you have other speakers?

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate very much the gentleman from Louisiana taking some time here and going through and reminding us of options that we do have as a country, and how we should be developing those options. Gas is one of them. Oil is another one of those. We have a whole bunch. And I appreciate his leadership, as well, on a no-cost stimulus bill which has about half a hundred sponsors here in the House already. One of the problems we do have, though, is we need to be realistic on how we are going to get from here to there. One of the options we always talk about is renewable energy. It is an important option to have. It needs to be developed. But we also have to be realistic on how we can actually get there. According to the Department of the Interior, the EIA, they have tried to estimate where we will need to be in the year 2030. And they estimate we will need about an 11 percent increase in the total amount of energy that we will be consuming by the year 2030. And if you look at where we were back in 1980 and where we need to go 50 years from that into the future of 2030, even if we were able to double the increase of biomass and renewables and double the percentage of nuclear that we are using, and making the assumption that we can actually squeeze a little bit more out of hydrogen power, this clearly shows you where we will be. The bottom three strata all are fossil-based fuel. We will not be able to turn ourselves over into that kind of alternative energy supply by ourselves. There needs to be some kind of impetus to do it. And as the gentleman from Louisiana easily said, if it is going to be a tax policy, that retards the ability because businesses will not be entering into the exploration and development. What we need to do is have a royalty policy, which simply means we are still going to be needing oil, gas and coal in the future, but if we use the royalties that are developed from the expansion of these areas and put them into a trust fund so the United States can use it to develop the alternative sources, we can dramatically change these strata coming in here, and we can do it in a logical and realistic way, which is, once again, what the no-cost stimulus bill tries to do. What we need to do is simply say, look, there are easy ways for us to move into a better direction if we actually use the resources that we have at hand to help build our fossil-fuel resources to help pay for the renewable resources that we need to have. It is a simple process. We should be doing it. But we are not doing it right now, which is why the American people are probably saying, take the cap off, and use the medicine the way it was intended to be used. We have one of those other problems that goes along, I will illustrate by being very parochial right now. My State of Utah has a whole lot of public land that has a whole lot of natural gas and oil developed. Recently, the Bureau of Land Management went through a 7- year review for land management policies in the State of Utah. I want to emphasize that again. Seven years of review to come up with a land management policy. What they came up with is actually less area developed that is usable for resources than they had 50 years ago when we first came up with this process of having land management policy plans. They actually, in this recent one, took 3 million acres out of potential production. Yet there was a cry that took place that said maybe we are trying to drill for oil and gas too close to national parks. Now, I want you, if you have a chance, to see very carefully here, this is Arches National Park outlined in green. The areas in purple around that are what actually the BLM in their land management plan, that took 7 years to develop, took off the table so they could not have any kind of natural oil or gas exploration done in those areas. Now so, far so good. But when they decided to actually produce the other leases and put them out for bid so that private industry-- especially as was mentioned before, we think of big oil companies like Exxon or Mobil. Ninety percent of all the oil and natural gas that is drilled in the United States comes from small companies, names that you don't know, people that have less than 500 employees. These are the people who are dealing with these particular lease issues. When those were presented, the Secretary of the Interior decided to remove 77 leases from the table from development with two arguments. Argument number one was we didn't spend enough time to study it. He claimed that there had been a rush to judgment. Now I find that difficult because it took 7 years for the local BLM to do their work and come up with a system that was not only signed off by the BLM but also signed off by the National Park Service and also was signed off by the State of Utah. And I especially find it interesting when we passed a $1 trillion stimulus bill in this House even after we guaranteed that we would have 48 hours to look at it and we actually ended up having between 4 and 8 hours to look at it, that was okay. But 7 years was a rush to judgment. The second thing he said is, well, these leases are too close to existing national parks. Now I pointed out where Arches is. And I pointed to the purple that were taken off. The stuff that is brown is existing leases right now. The stuff that is pink were leases that had been let, and the Secretary of the Interior decided to let them go through. The ones that are in red are the ones he said were too close to the national park. This one up here is in red. This all was allowed. The pink and the brown is in existence. And this is too close to the national park, even though the other leases are not. This one over here, once again, in red, was denied, taken off the table, even though this one was allowed and these are existing leases that take place. If I were to say ``this is irrational,'' I don't think I would be too far off the point. If I were to say that the reason these red spots were taken off is because they were subject to a lawsuit instituted by a special interest group, I would be closer to the point. The bottom line is this was not a rush to judgment. This was a 7-year, carefully hatched plan that had been reviewed by everybody in hundreds of town meetings with thousands of comments. And they are not too close to the natural beauties of the national parks. They are, in fact, miles away from them with areas that are currently being leased and developed much closer to these who are. What is the net result of this? The net result is the State of Utah lost $3 million last year to be put into their education system simply because those were off. And unfortunately, because of the State Trust Land system that we have in the West, many of these areas that are red have State Trust Lands abutting them that are also sterile now and not able to be used to develop funds that we need desperately in the State of Utah for our own kids. Sometimes I'm amazed when we talk about how the impact of what we do with our oil and gas leasing and our land plans, and we don't take those ancillary effects into account. For example, this is a simple chart that compares the salaries of teachers in Montana and Wyoming. Montana is the one at the bottom. Wyoming is the one at the top. And if you ask yourself, why is Wyoming starting their teachers at 20 grand a year more than Montana, it's because Wyoming is developing their resources. There are other spin-off effects. If I want to have decent colleges, or a K-12 system in the State of Utah, I need to develop these resources and not have them capriciously taken off the table because it was a rush to judgment or they are too close to a national park. Now, those are some of the problems that we simply face. Like, when I was first elected to the legislature in the State of Utah, that was clear back in 1978, we had a policy at that time called a recapture, which means if you put property tax on property in the State of Utah, whatever it raises, there is a minimum the State will guarantee. If your local district cannot raise the minimum school level by local property taxes, the State will subsidize it. In the seventies, late seventies, when I started, and early eighties, when I started, one of the unique concerns was we had a recapture, which meant there were three school districts in Utah that not only could raise enough property tax revenue to meet the minimum school level, there was enough to be taken away and given to the other districts to help the State out, which meant that every taxpayer in the State of Utah benefited. And the reason we had recapture was because there was energy development. Since the early eighties there has never been a recapture. There is nothing even close to a recapture today. And if I wanted to do a recapture, I need to develop these resources, which the BLM, Bureau of Land Management, after a 7-year study, justified. And unfortunately, because of actions of this administration, they are now taken off the table, and we are still struggling. And what is really sad is the next time, at a different location, there was a lease sale. It was the worst attended, the lowest productivity lease sale we have had in the history of those sales because, simply, business saw what happened in the State of Utah and realized they're not going to take the chance of developing and putting their resources in an area where the Federal Government simply might change their mind. All we need to do to solve our problems is say, look, take the cap off the medicine. It'll solve the problem. Some people say, well, we're developing too much land. I like this comparison. If you see how much land was developed in the Clinton administration, and how much was developed in the Bush administration, I would love to go back to the years of the Clinton administration when we were actually developing more land and developing more leases for energy resources to help us meet the needs of the country. We're actually decreasing in all those areas, not increasing at the same time. And as you noticed, as I said, the reason these were taken off the table is they were subject to a lawsuit. One of the things we have also found is a significant problem is, simply, we have become litigious- happy in this country. We are actually up, according to the Department of the Interior, 100 percent in the amount of permits to drill that have been applied. The wells that are completed are up 100 percent. But the environmental lawsuits are up 700 percent in the same area. That's why Utah lost those $3 million, a 700 percent increase from the year 2000 in the amount of lawsuits that are given. In 2008, off the coast of Alaska there were 487 leases that were let, and there were 487 lawsuits that were filed immediately afterwards. 50 percent of all the leases for energy development in the inner mountain west are right now involved in some kind of lawsuit. We can never develop our energy independence and our domestic energy policy, which will help solve our problems, if we have to continue going through this process of having continuous lawsuit after continuous lawsuit. And who are the people that are being hurt by it? Every American that will be paying more for their airplane tickets and their ball point pens and their shoes and their fertilizer, because we're adding more taxes on the oil industry, and every kid that goes to school in the West, because we cannot afford to fund the program because the money has been taken out because we simply have decided not to take the cap off and use the resources we have to help solve our problems. We can create jobs and we can stimulate this economy if we just do things in a logical and rational way. Now, Mr. Speaker, I have been joined here by the gentleman from Pennsylvania, another great new Member of the House of Representatives who is adding a great deal to the style of this body and the substance of our debate by his understanding of the issues. And even though Pennsylvania is considered an eastern State, we consider him a westerner because he faces the same issues in his part of Pennsylvania that we face in the State of Utah, maybe just with not quite as much public land, but the same issues. I wish to yield time to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I'll yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. A few weeks ago, I was in my office and a respiratory therapist had come into the office. He was talking about one of the patients that he had who came up and asked him if she could have a stronger medicine because what she was using simply did not work for her. So he said, Well, why don't you show me how you're using it. She showed him how she used it, and he said, Is that the way you always use it? The patient said, Yes. Then he said, Well, let's try it one more time--except this time why don't you take the cap off first. Now, sometimes I think in the policies that we develop here in the United States we have the same process--we go through the motions but we simply don't flat out take the cap off first. One of the things we need to do to solve our problem is simply take the cap off. We have had an energy policy in this country for the last 40 years. It's basically been, we develop nothing in the United States and we insist on living on cheap foreign oil. The problem is, doing nothing in the United States for 40 years has put us into a situation that is very tenable. The other problem is there is no longer cheap foreign oil. We have just recently voted on this floor on a budget--a budget outline. A budget outline that, quite frankly, taxes too much and spends too much and borrows too much. We've all heard that before because, to be honest, whether you talk now about the budget itself or the phrases of taxing, spending, and borrowing, they're basically a redundancy. They are indeed the same thing. What we have also done in this House is make a major paradigm shift. For the last 20 years, we have been functioning under the basic philosophy that the individual is significant and important. The individual has a worth that is divine. That once you empower that individual and give that individual options, you're ennobling that person. Well, the budget we just passed changes that basic philosophy. It changed that basic philosophy to say instead of empowering individuals, it is now the role and function of the Federal Government to solve people's problems. The Federal Government must now be given the power because the Federal Government now becomes the sole solution to the issues and needs of individuals. Those of us in the West, members of the Western Caucus, have a different point of view because we basically trust people. We recognize that one of the most important things that should be given to any individual is options and choices. People of the United States must be given options and choices so they can make a decision on how they want their life to develop. States should be given options and choices, regions should be given options. Whenever we try to establish a one-size-fits-all system from Washington, what we do is limit the ability to empower individuals to make decisions for themselves and to change their own lives. When I was growing up, the only kind of music you could buy were on vinyl records. If you wanted a particular song, you had to basically buy the entire record. With new gadgets today, even though they have become much smaller than this one that I still have absolutely no idea how to use, with gadgets like these today you can actually download the one record you want. You have a choice. You have options. And it seems one of the ironies of our life today is that in every facet of human life, options prevail. People have choices--except when it comes to dealing with the government. When that takes place, there is only one choice given: it is the Federal Government's choice. We are moving dangerously into an area where that becomes the predominant philosophy and the predominant result. Actually, the last bill upon which we voted today, that was exactly the philosophy behind that bill. It resolves itself also in the way we look at our energy policy and our energy future. We could solve many of our problems if we just had a wiser energy policy. I recognize that there are many people that said the budget we just did is not specifics; it's just broad parameters and directions for the future and whatever. But the basic problem remains that when we talk about people and we insist that our policy as a government should be to give options to people, then we will come with an entirely different approach and a strong and intelligent and rational energy policy for the United States that can open up the opportunities for--I don't care whether we're talking about cap-and- trade or oil leases or oil shale or the energy war on the poor or the myth of green jobs--what we need in each of those areas is to have the government open up options for individuals. One of the good things about my party is that in every one of these issues we are presenting alternative Republican options. We are trying to take the cap off to try and solve problems by looking at the issue in a new way and, in a new degree, based on options. One of those that has been introduced is the no-cost stimulus bill. A conservative estimate of the no-cost stimulus bill will say that this particular measure, whose goal is, once again, to increase the options that America has with its energy policy, would create at least 2 million new jobs and would introduce at least $10 trillion of economic growth into our economy. It would reduce the cost of living for individuals, and it would do it with absolutely no tax increase. Now, I know we have had a lot of people talking in the last few weeks about the idea that the majority of Americans, if our future path goes true, would not face a tax increase. In fact, for many it would be the indications of a middle-class tax cut. I want you to know that I have an element of skepticism with that, because I clearly remember the last time a President and Congress promised me a middle-class tax cut, or at least no increases of middle-class taxes. At that particular time I was a school teacher making less than $30,000 a year. And I guess I should have been grateful that the Federal Government in their wisdom would have classified me as one of the rich in America; because in that particular year, when I was offered the opportunity and the guarantee that there would be no increases but instead there would be a decrease in middle-class taxes, that is the year I faced the largest tax increase I have ever faced in my life. My wife had just taken a second job, and everything that she brought in that year was used simply to pay for the tax decrease that I had been promised. I guess it goes back to the original concept of how income tax was developed. You know, when income taxes were first established, the idea was that somebody else would be taxed to pay for everything. The idea was that only .5 percent--so you know something has changed over the years; .5 percent of your income would be taxed, but the first $3,000 were excluded, which was meaning basically everybody in America who was a middle-class worker was excluded from taxes. This was going to be a tax on only those rich people. Ironically enough, 80 percent of the people who would be impacted by the first time we instituted an income tax in this country actually lived in only four States. And, ironically enough, those representatives from those four States were the ones who voted against instituting an income tax. And, ironically enough, in the debate on the Senate on that installment or beginning of an income tax, the actual debate that took place was a Senator stood up and he said, once we have an income tax, the government will be more responsible for the way it handles other people's money. I think you have seen some changes in that; which is, once again, why I am so insistent that the no-cost stimulus bill is one we should be considering, because there is zero tax increase to the taxpayer, as opposed to the other budgets we are looking about that simply tax too much, spend too much, and borrow too much. The No-Cost Stimulus Act treats States fairly. It deals with increasing our net wealth in this country by the use of royalties. If that bill were put into effect, just in the Alaska coast alone there would be $95 billion of new corporate tax, not imposed on the company, but developed by the expansion of that company. There would be $114 billion in new royalties that would be coming in and used in this particular country. It would create, just in that one area of Alaska alone, 730,000 new jobs; versus the bill we just passed, which has a specific $80 billion tax on the oil industry alone, which creates no new jobs, which provides no new income. But that tax on that company is going to be passed on to middle-class taxpayers in this country. Because, you see, we were talking to an oil executive the other day, and he simply said: It is obvious. If we tax a business, like this $80 billion tax on only the oil industry, they are going to pass it on to consumers. That is the way it will always be. Sometimes we play games here in the District of Columbia where the idea is, we are not going to tax people, we will just tax the business; which business then passes that on to the people in the first place. And how is that going to come? I promise you, it is not going to be shown simply at the pump. Of every barrel of gas and oil that is produced, not all of that goes for energy consumption. A barrel of oil produces exactly 44.68 gallons of product. Of those 44.68 gallons, 19 of them will eventually become gasoline running your cars; nine will be diesel, a fuel; three will be jet fuel. The rest goes to other kinds of products that people use all the time. We think about oil and gas increases as something that only deals with transportation issues. But when I get on the next airplane, if I get a new Boeing 787 or any of the newer planes, you have to realize that one of reasons these planes are becoming more fuel efficient is because they are lighter weight, which means they are now using composite material. Over 50 percent of the entire airplane of the Boeing 787 will be composed of composites, and all of that composite is made from natural gas. When you sit on an airplane, you are sitting on natural gas. If you go out to your farmer, or even in your back garden and you need to put some fertilizer on that, realize that fertilizer is a byproduct of natural gas. When we fail to develop natural gas in this country, we put farmers at a disadvantage to the point that even today we are importing fertilizer from Russia because we are not doing enough to help ourselves. Five percent of the global natural gas consumption goes to ammonia, which is the basic product used in fertilizer. Whenever you pick up one of those electronics that you play with, when your kids start playing with it, they are made of lightweight plastics. That is oil and a natural gas. All of those are developed that way. If you get tired of watching your kids play with those electronics, or you get tired of listening to me speak tonight and you decide to go take an aspirin, I hate to say that, but that is oil and natural gas. What you don't know is that aspirin is derived from hydrocarbons that are found in every barrel of oil. If you want to have Kevlar to protect our soldiers or our police, you are going to make that stuff out of oil and natural gas. If you are walking around right now, you might look at your shoes and figure out that the stuff that holds them together comes from oil and a natural gas. If you are the tying them, the strings are a petrochemical compound. In fact, the soles are probably going to be imitation rubber, all of which comes out of a barrel of crude oil. Even the shoe polish you use comes from oil and natural gas. If you have a PVC pipe in your basement, that comes from petrocarbons. If you use a ballpoint pen to write a letter--in fact, I have in my hand a list of 84 examples of products that utilize oil and natural gas as the basis of those products, everything from golf balls to pantyhose to perfume to dentures. And how are the companies that are now being hit by an $80 billion oil tax going to recoup that? They are passing it on to anyone who uses golf balls or pantyhose or dentures or perfumes, or who writes with a pen or sits on plastic or who wears shoes or who flies in an airplane. That is a tax on all of us when we increase the cost of living. And how do we solve that problem? Well, we need to look around and simply decide that, as a policy, we are going to take the cap off the medicine, we are going to think of new options, and use what we have to solve our problems, to make our life better, and to solve our budgetary problems, because we have the capacity to do it. We just are refusing to do it right now. Mr. Speaker, at this time, if I may, I would like to yield some time to the gentleman from Louisiana, who has come up here and done such a great job in his first year as a Member of the House of Representatives. He also comes from an extremely significant energy region, which is going to be impacted not only by the budget we just passed but also by the energy policy decisions we make in the near future. If I could yield to the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Fleming, I would appreciate it.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate Mr. Thompson from Pennsylvania for going through many of the significant issues that have to be addressed and that can help us solve our budgetary problems if we just provide people options and take the cap off and let them use the medicine. He did mention one of those, which is cap-and-trade. Now, we did a great deal of talking this week about how we're not going to raise taxes on middle-income individuals, but we've already talked about how the $80 billion tax increase for the oil industry alone is going to be passed on. Cap-and-trade, which the gentleman also mentioned, has the same individual effort. It has been estimated that cap-and-trade will cost about $1.9 trillion, and that comes out to an average per household of just under $2,000 a year for the next 8 years. For those people who are now going to have to come up with that under the cap-and-trade approach, they either have to make $2,000 a year more every year or find some way of cutting back. To help them out, the Bureau of Labor has come up with some statistics that show what the average family does spend. For example, on all of their meat, their poultry, their fish, eggs, dairy products, and fruits and vegetables, the average family will spend about $1,700 a year. Well, that's not quite enough that they'd have to cut. For all furniture, appliances, carpets, and other furnishings, the average family spends about $1,700-plus a year. If you just do clothing, the average family spends $1,800 a year. For electricity and energy needs, the average family spends a little over $1,700. In property tax, the average family hits again $1,700. Those are some ways that people could actually afford the cap-and- trade or cap-and-tax program because--I'm sorry--whether we say it's a tax increase or not, it's going to cost average Americans.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the gentleman from New Jersey for pointing that out because, once again, we provide options for people. We take the cap off the medicine, and we can still solve all of our own problems. Let me talk very quickly about two final points: One is the concept that we can change to green energy jobs. I call it the ``myth of green energy.'' This administration has praised Spain, and has said that they should be an example we should follow as a country who has achieved long-term growth, going down a massive subsidization of green energy jobs. The only thing I worry about, according to their most recent studies of what has taken place in Spain, is that their green energy efforts simply have hindered their way out of their current economic crisis because, for every green energy job that was produced, it required a subsidy between $30,000 and $100,000. The total cost to Spain was $36 billion. The energy increase to Spain was a 31 percent increase for average people in Spain for their energy increases. I hate to say this, but for every energy job that allegedly was created, there were 2.2 jobs that were killed as a result of them. This is actually a job loss. One of the problems we have in doing that is, simply, there is no definition of what is a ``green job.'' In reality, as we found once again in Spain, clerical work, bureaucratic work and administrative jobs are now considered green jobs. The net effect, though, still in Spain is, for every job they created, they lost 2.2 jobs. Now I would like to just say in some conclusion to this--and we could go on and talk about a lot of other things--that there is the issue of offshore drilling in which the previous administration had a 60-day comment period. This administration has decided to put in an unprecedented 6-month comment period as if we don't know what we're doing already. There is the issue of oil shale in my State, and once again, this administration has decided to stop the development of leases and the development of resources for oil shale. In conservative estimates, there is three times the amount of oil potential just in the States of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming than there is in Saudi Arabia. But I want to remind people of why we're talking about this issue of energy as it relates to the budget at all. One of the things we as a government ought to do is try to avoid pain. I realize that there are some people who have said it's a shame to waste any crisis, but one of the things, maybe, that we should be trying to do is to prevent future crises. I think some of us can remember back to last fall when gasoline was over $4 a gallon and how terrible the situations and lifestyles were back then, which have now been placed on the back burner because it's not so frantic and not so necessarily needed, because we faced one of the unique phenomena that has happened only once in the world, which is that the entire world dropped their consumption of oil. We are now consuming 1.4 million barrels in the world less than we did last fall when it was $4 a gallon. Our experts tell us that that will probably continue through the year 2009, but come 2010, it's going to go right back up. Since the United States has yet to solve its energy production problems--not for the short term, not for the long term because we refuse to take the cap off the medicine and make options for people--we still import 40 percent of our energy from foreign countries. We are still bound and determined to do whatever Hugo Chavez wants in some particular way. For whom are we fighting? Remember last fall for whom we were fighting--for the people in my State, for the kids who need their education, for the 1,100 airline employees who were laid off when 100 planes were taken out of one company's system, for the Ethiopian cab driver here in Washington, D.C. who told me that he had to drive 2 hours every day longer to make up because of the high cost of energy and that, for the first time in his life, he was not able to be home when his kid came home from school, for the father in Virginia who refrained from going to fathers' and sons' activities because he couldn't afford the cost of gas, or for the Wisconsin high school that tried to have a fashion show to show kids how they could dress warmly in fleeces and in zipped sweaters and try and compensate in that particular way, or for North Dakota where they cut their schools back to 4 days a week, or for a district in Iowa that decided the only kinds of trips they could go on were going to be athletic events--no more choir, no more field trips, no more junior high trips whatsoever, even for the American Defense Department, which saw its energy budget go from $3 billion to $13 billion a year just because of the increase of gas, or for the church in Vermont that found itself with a $10,000 increase in its electrical bill out of the blue, or for the nurse in Chicago who dropped cable television in an effort to try and solve her problems, or for the elderly people who no longer went on trips, or for the guy in St. Paul, Minnesota, who only went out if he were in his electric wheelchair because he could recharge it for free in his apartment. In this country, when we talk about energy policies, we talk about them as if they were some ethereal concept that was out there, an abstract concept. It's not. When we talk about our energy policy, we are talking about how people cook their food and how they heat their homes, and we create jobs because of it. For every dollar that is spent on energy for those people who are in the most vulnerable situations, for those who are in the lowest half of our economic stratum, for every dollar they have to spend on high-energy costs, it was a dollar they couldn't spend on a luxury like Hamburger Helper. It is energy that is the great social equalizer. It is energy that creates economic opportunities, and this country has more energy imprisoned than most countries have. All we need to do is to try to tap into that potential, for when prices increase--and they will again-- jobs will be lost; income vanishes; social programs suffer; America suffers at the same time, and it hurts those who are on fixed incomes and those who are on the poverty level the most. That's 45 million people who are on fixed incomes. You see, if the social and economic elite of this country can easily solve this problem, if you're rich, the high cost of energy is nothing more than an inconvenience. We had Presidential candidates who would fly around the country in three different jets one day, and it was okay. All they had to do was buy a carbon offset for it. We have a former political leader whose home consumes 20 times more energy in one day than an average family will consume in a year, and it's okay; he can just buy an offset. It's like going back to the medieval time period. An ancient duke or earl, if he did something wrong, could go out and buy an indulgence, and his life style would go on the same without any kind of impact. If you're rich, that's what the energy crisis means to you, but if you're poor, that's when you hurt. That's when you have to decide whether you're going to pay for gas or for heating or simply for food. That's who gets hurt the most. Eleven percent of a rich person's income goes for energy consumption. For anyone at the poverty level, 50 percent goes for energy consumption. This country has the ability of solving that problem. Think of all the great inventions this country has done. In 1784, we came up with bifocals; in 1805, refrigerators; in 1849, the safety pin; 1867 was a great year because this country came up with the typewriter, barbed wire and toilet paper all in one particular year. And we can't come up with a solution to this problem? We can if we, once again, unlock the potential within every American and offer them options and then give them rewards for those options. England had no idea in the 1700s of how to chart the ocean, so they asked for a competition, for somebody to come up with the answer. In 1714, a clock maker came up with the system of longitude and latitude that we are still using today. Napoleon didn't know how to feed his troops. He came up with a competition, and in 1810, the concept of vacuum packing that we use today was developed. Even Lindbergh, when he flew across the Atlantic, was responding to a competition established by a newspaper. All we need to do is unlock the potential of Americans. We have the potential. We need to have options. We need simply to have the government take the cap off the medicine so America can grow. If we do that, we can solve our energy problems. We can have energy solutions into the future, and we can solve our budget problems all at the same time. They are interrelated, and this is where America simply needs to ask their government to take the cap off. Let us grow. Let us succeed. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your patience, and I appreciate the time. I yield back.

Mr. BISHOP of Utah

Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Speaker, the gentlelady from Texas, who is still here on the floor, had inadvertently put me as one of the cosponsors on H.R. 265. I would ask unanimous consent to have my name removed from that particular bill.